The Hayswater Boat + 

A region desolate and wild, + 

Black, chafing water: and afloat, + 

And lonely as a truant child + 

In a waste wood, a single boat: + 

No mast, no sails are set thereon; + 

It moves, but never moveth on: + 

And welters like a human thing + 

Amid the wild waves weltering. + 

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep, + 

Far down the torrent cleaves its way: + 

In front the dumb rock rises steep, + 

A fretted wall of blue and grey; + 

Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone + 

With many a wild weed overgrown: + 

All else, black water: and afloat, + 

One rood from shore, that single boat. + 

Last night the wind was up and strong; + 

The grey-streak’d waters labour still: + 

The strong blast brought a pygmy throng + 

From that mild hollow in the hill; + 

From those twin brooks, that beachèd strand + 

So featly strewn with drifted sand; + 

From those weird domes of mounded green + 

That spot the solitary scene. + 

This boat they found against the shore: + 

The glossy rushes nodded by. + 

One rood from land they push’d, no more; + 

Then rested, listening silently. + 

The loud rains lash’d the mountain’s crown, + 

The grating shingle straggled down: + 

All night they sate; then stole away, + 

And left it rocking in the bay. + 

Last night?⁠—I look’d, the sky was clear. + 

The boat was old, a batter’d boat. + 

In sooth, it seems a hundred year + 

Since that strange crew did ride afloat. + 

The boat hath drifted in the bay⁠— + 

The oars have moulder’d as they lay⁠— + 

The rudder swings⁠—yet none doth steer. + 

What living hand hath brought it here? + 